A smart card contact pad is well known and is used in SIM cards for mobile telecommunications devices and bank cards, amongst other things. The known pad is layered with gold on both sides, being a card-reader contact side and a chip mounting side. Gold provides resistance to corrosion and oxidation, along with enabling wire-bonded connections between the chip mounting side and the IC chip being applied.
However, the use of a precious metal on both sides of the smart card contact pad increases manufacturing cost along with accelerating the depletion of a valuable natural resource.
The present invention therefore seeks to provide a solution to this problem.